It Happened One Night story
It Happened One Night is a 1934 pre-Code American romantic comedy film with elements of screwball comedy directed and co-produced by Frank Capra, in collaboration with Harry Cohn, in which a pampered socialite (Claudette Colbert) tries to get out from under her father's thumb and falls in love with a roguish reporter (Clark Gable). The plot is based on the August 1933 short story "Night Bus" by Samuel Hopkins Adams, which provided the shooting title. Classified as a "pre-Code" production, the film is among the last romantic comedies created before the MPPDA began rigidly enforcing the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code in July 1934. It Happened One Night was released just four months prior to that enforcement.
18 total · 1 choice · 6 major · 11 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| infatuation | choice | Ellen and Peter became besotted with each other over the course of their lengthy journey. |
| choosing between lovers | major | After much strife, the spoiled heiress Ellen ultimately decided to leave her famous aviator new husband at the altar and marry the newspaper man Peter whom she truly loved. |
| coping with a spoiled brat | major | Peter put up with spoiled heiress Ellen in order to get a scoop. |
| facing organized pursuit | major | Ellen was running away and trying to avoid numerous detectives hired by her rich father. |
| father and daughter | major | Ellen ran away from her seemingly domineering dad. He later proved himself to be a caring father by encouraging Ellen to break off her engagement to a famous aviator and go for the man she really loved instead. |
| journalism | major | Peter was a newspaper man. The story follows his attempts to get a scoop on the runaway socialite Ellen. |
| seeing the error of one's ways | major | The spoiled heiress Ellen became a more mature person through influence of Peter, whom she fell in love with. |
| compassion | minor | The hard-nosed newspaper editor Joe Gordon took pity on his newspaper man Peter when Peter's big scoop fell through. Instead of firing Peter on the spot, Joe brushed the incident off as a kind of gag, slipped a bill into Peter's pocket, and told him to come back again once he was sobered up. |
| coping with cold feet | minor | Ellen left King Westley standing at the altar. This was after Westley arrived on the scene in dramatic fashion in an autogyro. |
| coping with unwelcome romantic attention | minor | Ellen was hit on by an annoying man on the bus. |